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Yes it is. I have this Spanish speaking friend who came and read this essay on the web for me about the spanish adaption of a cross between Saint Christopher and the red Devils on lamposts in Granada. This red guy with Horns and a basket on his back and a Bogey-man who carrys a pitchfork and does a dance of Devils in Catalonia.
All very confusing I thought- but then I cannot read spanish. Apparently Saint Christopher had two personalities- before saved and after saved by Baptism. Apparently he did not eat Baby Jesus- but was sorely tempted to. Or something along those lines.
~Lorredan

The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

have we discussed it before? I seem to recall mentioning that though the patron was french, the artist was Italian? Was it this one?

(As courts integrated the families often used the same artists from different regions -- which is in part what led to the uniformity of a wide spread late gothic style -- one which can complicate style and content as a means of identifying geographic locale.)

edited to add: oops no, I see it is by the master of brussels... must be another one I was thinking of.

Ah, yes it probably was this one I was thinking of... we discussed it before and I think I mentioned he was Italian, possible from Bologna? *

quote:
An early example of such a trick is the placement of an illusory scroll over, and casting a shadow on, the border and text in a book of hours in London, British Library, MS Add. 29433 (Fig. 10), illuminated in Paris by an Italian artist in the first decade of the fifteenth century.15

15. This artist is now known as the Master of the Brussels Initials, after the book of hours illuminated for John, Duke of Berry, in which he participated, now in Brussels (Bibliothèque Royale,MS 11060-61): see Meiss, French Painting in the Time of John, Duke of Berry: The Patronage of the Duke (New York, 1966), 229-46; Calkins, Illuminated Books, 250-82; and Patrick de Winter, "Art, Devotion and Satire: The Book of Hours of Charles III, the Noble, of Navarre, at the Cleveland Museum of Art," Gamut, A Journal of Ideas and Information 2 (Winter 1981), 42-59, for a sense of the controversy surrounding this illuminator.

The Master of the Brussels Initials was an anonymous illuminator who began his career in the late 1300s in a prominent workshop in Bologna. His name comes from the fifteen historiated initials he painted in a book of hours , now in Brussels, commissioned by Jean, duc de Berry.

The Master's career developed parallel to the growth of international workshops active in book production in the late Middle Ages. After enjoying a successful career in Bologna for more than a decade, he moved to the Ile-de-France, where he adapted the more pastel and subtle colors of French court illumination. To the many manuscripts that he decorated in France, he introduced not only stocky Bolognese figure types but also an exuberant style of border decoration teeming with large acanthus leaves, frolicking putti, and amusing zoomorphic figures. The mix of Italian and French elements in this artist's work epitomizes the character of European court painting around 1400, appropriately called the International style.
end quote from:http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/art ... maker=3620

That's an interesting comparison, Mike. I have trouble imagining such a reversal of the meaning of the figure, though. The Cary Sheet Devil also looks nothing like this.

Just conceptually, in order to imagine illustrations of Petrarch's Fama being the source for the Devil, I have to find the area of overlap of the "semantic range" (or semiotic range?) of "Fame" and "Devil". We might find that in the concepts of vanity, vainglory, hubris, etc.

Fama also means rumor, certainly something that can be linked with the devil, but like you I don't see a connection to the original image that the Cary Sheet was surely close to.

robert wrote:A repost of the image I found with similarities to the Cary Sheet Devil:

Title of Work: Book of Hours
Illustrator: Master of the Brussels Initials
Production: France (Paris), circa 1407
Description: (Whole folio) A scene in Hell; historiated initial and decorated border with foliage, figures and birds. From the Penitential Psalms and Litany.

Title Book of Hours, Use of Sarum ('The Taymouth Hours')
England, S. E.? (London?)
Date 2nd quarter of the 14th century
Language Latin and French
Script Gothic
Artists Sandler 1986 identifies the artist as that of Glasgow, University Library MS Hunter 231, made for Roger of Waltham (d. c. 1336), canon of St. Paul's, London.

From the site:
"France: Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs in La Tour-sur-Tinée
The frescoes in the Chapel of the White Penitents in the perched village of La Tour were painted in 1492 by Guirard Nadal and Currand Bravesi, two of the so-called peintres primitifs niçois (primitive painters of Nice) who are only known from this chapel. The sidewalls are covered with twenty panels in vibrant colours, depicting the Passion of Christ, while the ceiling shows God in Majesty within a purple mandorla. The altar wall is reserved for the Last Judgment with St. Peter herding the righteous to Heaven's door, while the damned are tortured by a group of devils worthy of Hieronymus Bosch."

The Tarot will lose all its vitality for one who allows himself to be side-tracked by its pedantry. - Aleister Crowley